1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to electronic design automation (EDA), and more particularly, relates to techniques and structures allowing for management of multiple-source fabrication data in an EDA environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the electronic design industry, a project design flow at a given process node may include a variety of tools, either from a single electronic design automation (EDA) vendor, or from multiple EDA vendors. Each EDA tool in a design flow may rely on a special technology file that describes the process “recipe” for the level of abstraction that particular EDA tool operates at. Further, in-house tools and techniques may augment commercially available tools/flows with internally developed enhancement techniques. Accordingly, commercial design tools and internal procedures may use a variety of underlying technology (“tech”) data in order to function properly.
Complications may arise during the development of a design project, however, as technology data used by an EDA tool may be in a preliminary (non-final) form at various stages of the project. In other stages of a project, technology data that is used by one or more EDA tools may simply be unavailable. In this case, “best guess” hand-generated data may be used in place of the missing data.
Accordingly, design and/or testing may have to take place without the availability of all the final, underlying EDA tool data. This approach can lead to difficulties, particularly as design and testing processes near their conclusions. For example, as a design project progresses, there may be no obvious indication that potentially unreliable hand-generated data was used at an earlier stage of the design project in place of other, unavailable EDA tool data. For example, hand-generated data that is stored in an application format, rather than a human-readable format, may be difficult for a developer to review or visually check. Thus, as time progresses, hand-generated data may be erroneously accepted as the “real” data. Another potential pitfall is that earlier, less accurate versions of EDA tool data may be used instead of more recent data versions (for example, due to tool data becoming available to developers in piecemeal fashion).
Incorrect tool data may cause discrepancies to be uncovered in the later steps of a design project, rather than earlier steps. Even worse, discrepancies may even go entirely undetected. Attempting to fix a discrepancy by reverse engineering an underlying tech file and/or design data can be a time-consuming process. Accordingly, providing such a fix may cause expensive delays or remedies—such as having to make one or more additional tape-outs for an integrated circuit that is being designed.